Trope of the Week: Camp Gay

He’s white, thin, upper-middle class, and every girl’s best friend. He loves shopping, and if he sees you wearing something tacky, he won’t hesitate to let you know. Diva to the extreme, this gay is the most prominent example in contemporary TV and fiction, and if you’ve got something more fantasy on your hands, then just swap out the fashion-loving for some extreme sass, and you’ve got yourself quite the character.

Why this can be bad: This is overwhelmingly the number one representation of queerness in media worldwide. Like every stereotype, there’s some truth in fiction; there are gay men who act like this and look like this. But oftentimes a character like the camp gay is created to fill a quota, and he’s boiled down to the traits commonly associated with gay people by straight audiences. These characters never go beyond these superficial traits, and they often exist either…